


a furlong of flight

by tigrrmilk



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Academy Era, Board Games, Gen, Kobayashi Maru, M/M, No Character Death, Rain, So much talking, post-scarcity coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 20:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11238213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigrrmilk/pseuds/tigrrmilk
Summary: In which death is not a game, but Jim is going to beat it anyway. Leonard isn't so sure that's how it works.





	a furlong of flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [neenya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neenya/gifts).



there is no flying from my fate  
the die is cast  
the answer _no_

**a furlong of flight - rosie hood**

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s Sunday. Which shouldn’t make that much of a difference to Leonard. Except he’s just woken up from a fitful night of sleep, which came directly after a fucking long double-shift at the clinic, and it’s raining outside like nothing he’s ever seen. He can’t help but feel gloomy about it. Sunday is meant to be for relaxing, and sitting around the table with the whole family.

But all he’s got for company is the fucking rain.

It’s too loud to even be relaxing. It sounds like the new espresso machine Jim bought for his dorm, which Leonard still thinks is a ploy to make him visit Jim more often. Right now it just makes him want some of his own coffee, but he’s somehow _out_.

_Fffffffffffffpffffpfffffff_

Leonard is not a gloomy person! He’s just realistic! But sometimes it’s hard _not_ to be gloomy when it’s a Sunday in the middle of summer, your best friend has deserted you to spend the weekend playing some kind of strategy boardgame you could never _hope_ to be able to understand, and it looks like you’ll die in a minor disaster at sea if you dare to set foot outside of your lonely, bare apartment building.

 _Buckle up_ , he thinks, sourly. _Replicate some coffee, and get to work._ He’s got a research paper to finish and three lab reports that were due -- well, he’s not sure when they were due, but he’s pretty sure it’s long in the past, and that the only reason his supervisor hasn’t been chasing him to send them over is that he pities Leonard and his sad little life.

There’s the gloominess again. He rubs a hand over his face and goes in search of replicated coffee. Right. So the thing is that Leonard wrote a paper for an elective class on post-scarcity economics -- he mostly took it to get out of having to take an intermediate flight class that Jim kept trying to trick the Starfleet computer system to sign him up for, since the classes were conveniently at the same time -- about replicated food and drink. The thing is, that Leonard knows that the idea that non-replicated coffee is any less good than “real” coffee is bogus. Sentimental, capitalist, outdated nonsense.

“Espresso. Double. Black.” He hits himself on the forehead with the palm of his hand as the replicator rumbles to life, but gently.

The thing is, Leonard knows logically that there is no difference. He wrote the paper and got a good grade because he _did the research_. He even tested it on Jim -- he swallows the espresso slightly too quickly as he remembers this, and coughs painfully as it goes the wrong way down. (It involved lots of food, and it had been meant to be a _perfunctory_ research exercise but it had definitely not felt that way in the end).

The thing is, if Leonard knows anything, he knows himself. And he knows that he _is_ sentimental, that he still likes “real” coffee best. And he sort of hates it, but there’s no running away from that. He can’t make himself into someone better. God knows both he and Jocelyn _tried_.

He grimaces as he drinks some more of the espresso and thinks about how stupid it is that the entirety of history has happened and everything has progressed so far from whether humanity began, and the world has spread itself out before him... just so it can pave the way for Leonard to drink a cup of magically replicated free coffee right at this moment. And he still has the audacity to think that he’d prefer a cup made with his own, home-roasted beans. He takes another gulp and turns back towards his desk. Ugh. Research paper. _Right_.

It’s Sunday. He gets a paragraph further into writing his paper and he’s ready to throw his padd and his chair and everything else in his sad little room out the window. Where it will presumably drown.

It’s _still raining_. Maybe that’s the reason for the hammering against his head/heart.

He’s been studiously ignoring Jim’s messages, but the coffee hasn’t helped his headache any and he’s going to have to delete the writing he’s just done later on with Extreme Prejudice, so he gives in and pulls the messages up with a swipe of his left thumb. There are a few more than he expected, and the first few are from the night before:

_planning my moves for tomorrow diligently and you’re not even here to help  
are you proud, bones_

_No_ , Leonard thinks, spitefully. He doesn’t know _how_ to play Go, he’d be less use at it than Jim would be at assisting minor surgery. At least Jim has a vague idea of what a body looks like and where all its different parts are supposed to be. Or so Leonard’s _heard_.

The messages trundle on, settling into almost-incoherence as Jim got either too tired or drunk to be awake (Leonard hopes for the first, although neither bodes particularly well for today’s tournament), and then there’s a break before today’s steady stream of interior-monologue-disguised-as-messages started up anew. Leonard resists the urge to send back sarcastic replies before he’s read them all. It’s more economical, more efficient, to load all his scorn into one riposte.

Also, he likes Jim, and he likes reading messages from him. Mostly.

 _don’t know why i didn’t think of this before but go is perfect training for the maru_  
you’re old and set in your ways so think of it like this: it’s chess but really hard

“Go fuck yourself,” Leonard says, _out loud_ , like an idiot.

Jim doesn’t elaborate further on how Go could help him with the Kobayashi Maru, he just starts to bitch about the quality of the tea they’re serving players in the dining hall which is hosting the tournament today.

_they’re not even using china cups. the cups are made out of PAPER. it’s insulting._ _i’m insulted.  
_ _do you think they replicated stale tea on purpose to fuck with me?_

Leonard gives up on work and fills a thermos with coffee from the replicator. The rain... well, it’s still coming down. In sheets. No, more violent than that. It’s raining bottles and knives out there, from the noise it’s making. Leonard puts on his jacket and curses when he realises he doesn’t have an umbrella in this godforsaken dorm room. Nothing for it but to take it philosophically, he supposes. The only way out is through.

\---

“Bones, I knew I could count on you for the goods,” Jim says, taking the offered flask with reverence. He takes a long gulp directly from the thermos - he’s going to burn himself doing that, and it’s certainly not Leonard’s fault - and sighs. “Proper coffee, at last.”

Leonard doesn’t correct him. He collapses into a chair and takes in the scene. The hall is only half-full - Jim’s between games, and has apparently been practicing ludicrously complicated scenarios against _himself_. He recognises a handful of other people playing - Spock is beating someone who appears to be extremely young, Uhura has a notepad out and is drawing some diagrams, and a scientist Leonard _thinks_ is called Sulu is slumped over in a chair at the other side of the room, presumably waiting for someone to finish. He looks bored out of his _mind_. Leonard sympathises.

“I’m not helping,” he says. He pushes his damp hair off his forehead and sighs. It’s warm in here, but the air still feels wet. Humid. What he wouldn’t give for a few hot, dry days.

“I thought you didn’t know the rules anyway,” Jim says, as he dashes some counters around the board and tilts his head to one side.

“The Maru,” Leonard says.

“You’re not making sense,” Jim says, as if anything about this entire situation makes sense. He looks at Leonard intensely for a half-second before he looks away again. “Of course you’re helping. I got you your pass -- no, merit, excuse me Bones -- in your shuttle piloting class. You owe me.”

“I owed you before the _last_ time we did it,” Leonard says, easily. “Kid, I owe you nothing.”

Jim purses his lips and retraces his steps across the Go board with his fingers.

The thing is, that Jim is a genius. Leonard’s no child psychologist, just a regular doctor, but he wonders if this is what always happens if you let a genius raise himself. Jim seems to have spent his youth learning how to fight, play chess, how to play Go, how to play a handful of random musical instruments, how to speak the six different languages spoken in his little town in Iowa... he’s proficient in basic theoretical rocket engineering, he can name all of the bones in the human ear, feet and hands, and in general he seems to have the manner of someone who has read a lot of books with little encouragement from anybody else. Jim has raised himself, and he’s raised himself to fix whatever problems he had. Can’t speak to the lady who lives across the road? Get her to teach you. Want to drive that abandoned care you’ve had your eye on for the past few weeks? Learn how to fix it up and drive.

He’s exactly the kind of person who needs the Kobayashi Maru.

No.

Leonard thinks back to the first time they tried; the first time Jim failed. He thinks about it, hard - the look on Jim’s face when he realised they’d all died. Leonard looking up at him from beneath his eyelashes. The tiny moment -- when Jim realised he couldn’t save them. And thinking of that moment, Leonard revises that thought. No, Jim is the person the Kobayashi Maru was designed _for_.

“So, Go is a much more complicated game than chess,” Jim says. He pours some of the coffee out into the flask’s lid and hands it to Leonard, who takes it with a small incline of his head in thanks. Jim goes back to swigging from the flask, like he’s Leonard on a bad flight and the flask is full of whisky, not replicated coffee. “It’s like...” he gestures with his hands. “It’s like, much bigger, wider in scope. A lot more variables, right?”

Leonard doesn’t encourage him by answering. It doesn’t matter. Jim’s encouraging _himself_.

“So it’s like - the Maru. It’s only a game, right? It’s just another scenario. It’s just another step up. I just need to catalogue all the variables and draw out the different moves...”

“You know that won’t work,” Leonard says. A cadet with green skin and long pink hair is slowly making her way towards their corner of the room. Leonard tilts his head to one side, considering her. “It’s a death trap.”

“ _You’re_ a death trap,” Jim says, with feeling, and he pushes the board away from him. A couple of the counters fall off and roll away on the floor, so when the woman reaches them he’s scrabbling around on the floor to pick them up.

\---

Leonard only lasts half an hour into the most boring game he’s ever failed to follow before he gets up to leave. “Keep the flask,” he says. It’s not the good kind anyway. “See you around.” Jim catches up to him at the door, and scratches ruefully through his hair as he seems to be considering what to say.

“I don’t have all day,” Leonard says, like an asshole.

Jim rolls his eyes. “Really,” he says. “That’s why you brought me coffee. And stayed to watch me play a game that you know nothing about.”

“I hate you,” Leonard says. “You’re a brat.” And _what_ an asshole.

Jim spreads his hands out, wordlessly. Like he’s saying, _What?_

It’s still raining outside. Leonard pushes the door open anyway, which is how he and Jim find themselves standing under a big, fragrant tree which barely functions as shelter, but at least there’s nobody else around.

“You know what the point of it is,” Leonard says. It’s not a question. Kirk’s a genius. If Leonard, who is at pains to remind the entire world he is just an ordinary, competent doctor, and not some kind of luminous terrifying space genius, understands the point...

Although, maybe that’s key.

“Everyone knows the point of it,” Jim says. “It’s _boring_.”

“Sometimes you just have to let the patient die,” Leonard says. He’s not thinking of his father, who signed his DNR as soon as the diagnosis was confirmed, who Leonard did not kill but did not save, even though he probably could have. He pulls up his jacket sleeve and shows Jim a few small, pink scars on the inside of his elbow, where a patient crazed by some drugs he’d never heard of before had stabbed him with one of his own needles multiple times before Leonard had managed to sedate him. He’d kept the scars. “Sometimes you save them and it hurts,” he says, as way of explanation for it. “Sometimes you don’t, and that hurts too.”

“I’m not a doctor,” Jim says, a small smile tugging at one side of his mouth.

Leonard tilts his head towards the sky, and gets a face full of rain for his trouble.

“Oof,” he says, and wipes at his eyes with his hands before Jim takes pity on him and hands him the packet of tissues he always keeps stowed somewhere in his uniform. Allergies: good for something.

“I mean it, though,” Jim says. “It’s boring. I don’t mean...” and he waves at Leonard, who still hasn’t rolled his sleeve down. “But they keep trying to teach us about the moment that I don’t think can be taught. It’s not real.”

He sighs, and Leonard can feel a drop of water running along his nose as he tries to nod along seriously, with a serious look on his face. _My life is stupid._

“So what? So what, you all _die_. I don’t accept that. That’s what their stupid simulation refuses to understand. I don’t accept that. So what? The first time we did it, you all died. What if this time you don’t? What if I can get you all back?”

“Jim,” Leonard says, gently.

“And I know it’s not a game! But it’s not fucking real. And fuck them for thinking they can teach me how it will really feel and that I won’t fight back. No; I refuse.”

They’re both really wet now. Leonard kind of wants to remind Jim that he didn’t actually die, that he was just pretending, and that he wasn’t very good at it. But he thinks that’s a good way to get punched in the face.

This isn’t really how he was expecting Sunday to go.

“Bones,” Jim says.

“What,” Bones says, wary as he’s ever been.

“You’ve got to promise me that you won’t just die like that. When we’re in space.”

“Who says I’m following you to space,” Bones says, by which he means, you’re an idiot and nobody can promise that. He doesn’t want to say it again. But the words repeat inside his head. Sometimes you just have to let the patient die. The thing is, he has trouble looking at Jim - Jim, who is standing in front of him, blond hair plastered to the top of his head and blue eyes dry as anything in the midst of all this rain, and that half-smile that looks so sad that he can’t stand it. He has trouble looking at Jim like this and believing that he doesn’t already know everything they’re trying to teach him.

“I refuse,” Jim says. “And no matter what you say, you’re coming with me.”

Leonard doesn’t know if he means into the Kobayashi Maru, or into space, or if he just means - life.

They end up in Jim’s favourite off-campus bar that night, which is a fine first step. Leonard’s cocktail has a circle of salt around the rim and the drink is so, so sour. He pulls a face at it, involuntarily, just as Jim looks up at him and starts to laugh. “You looked like an old man,” Jim says, by way of explanation. “Just for a second. You’re back to you again now. Like I suddenly saw you in sixty years time.”

“Yeah, well,” Leonard says, and wipes a fragment of salt from his lip. Jim is sprawled back against the bar, his hair curling where it was wet earlier. “You don’t know how young you are, kid.”

Jim laughs, and won’t explain why until they’re on their way back to Leonard’s dorm (“closer to the bars,” Jim always says, except it’s really not). “You think you’re so old and wise,” Jim says, not meanly, and something about the tenderness of it cuts Leonard deep. “You’re not even thirty yet. Old man on campus.”

“I hate that,” Leonard says. But he doesn’t. Jim leans heavily against him, even though he’s not particularly drunk. Not really. It’s not raining anymore, but it’s hot and damp outside, and Leonard doesn’t even bother inviting Jim in but he follows him up. They end up sitting on Leonard’s shitty, unmade bed, a big pot of green tea on the floor in front of them - “this is the good stuff, not like that replicated coffee you brought me earlier,” Jim says, even though Leonard did _not_ tell him about that; Leonard is way too tired to enquire about how he worked it out - and a couple of mismatched mugs on the rug by it. It’s summer, and Leonard feels very young and very old.

“Do you really ever learn to accept it?” Jim says, tipping his head onto Leonard’s shoulder. Leonard’s heart and head are both thumping again.

“What?” Leonard says. He can think of a lot of things he’s had to learn to accept. Divorce, his father’s death. Terrible gifts from his Grandparents every Christmas. Docked marks for papers he wrote while hungover. His fear of flying. His fear of other things, too.

“You know,” Jim says, and Leonard does know.

“You learn to move past it,” Leonard says. “You can’t get stuck or you’ll let everyone else down too.” It could refer to a lot of things.

Jim shakes his head. Leonard feels his hair tickling against his neck. “I’m not a doctor,” he says, again. “That’s not how it is for me.” In the years to come, Bones will see Jim accept different deaths of those under his command in different ways - some with dignity and grace, some with rage, and some with weeping. He will hear Jim swear and bang against the inside of his own ship in desperation - “I do not accept this, your death would be a gross insubordination, you get back here now, you hear me?” and he will hear Jim whisper, “please don’t leave me.”

There will be the times - really mostly just _the_ time - that Jim accepts his own death, which Leonard will do his best not to think about because he _can't_.

Leonard will wake up in his own sickbay, and for a second he will think that he is alone, and then he will see that the captain has somehow slid from the uncomfortable visitor’s chair onto the floor. “Jim,” he’ll say, before he thinks better of it. And Jim will open his eyes, and he’ll say. “Bones, Bones, I was right. I didn’t accept it. I told you I didn’t accept it. Do you remember?”

Bones will remember the taste of sour whiskey, and too much salt, and kissing Jim Kirk for the first time in his little, sad, single-occupant graduate student dorm room. And he will remember Jim saying, “What if I can get you all back?”

“You did it for me first,” Jim will say, as if Leonard needs remembering. And Leonard will raise his eyes to heaven, which is a feat when you’re on a starship and frankly it will hurt more than just a little bit, but he won’t let on.

“Yeah, yeah,” Leonard will say, and his throat will feel scratchy and sore but it will _work_. “I’m a lousy doctor, always was. I put up with too much of your shit, Jim.”

But for now, they just sit still, pressed together, and feel the air pulse between them. And Jim says, one more time. “I won’t accept the loss. They can’t make me.”

“I know,” Leonard says. It is not something he can bring himself to argue against any more than he has. He’s Jim’s friend, not his mentor. He’s a doctor, not a commanding officer. It’s far, far too hot to sleep. He can feel sweat on his back, and it’s not a nice sensation exactly but he doesn’t want to, can’t, won’t move. Jim’s always moving a million miles an hour; his mind, his mouth, his body. Right now Leonard has him here, and he can feel him breathing against him, the only movement in the air. “I might think you’re wrong,” Leonard says, which doesn’t mean he _does_ think that. “But I know.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Jim says. And he cups Leonard’s face with his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the song by rosie hood. go is a real game, and my college really did host a tournament like this in the dining hall, but i know about as much about it as leonard does.
> 
> i know very little about star trek and this is my first attempt at fic. sorry for any inaccuracies w/canon!


End file.
